The Seattle-based coffee chain already gives customers a dime discount each time they bring in reusable cups for refills. Now it's hoping the new cups — which bear its logo and resemble its white paper cups — will increase the habit.

Starbucks' stores maintain tips containers next to its cash registers. Pursuant to company policy, accumulated tips are distributed weekly to baristas and shift supervisors in proportion to the number of hours they worked.

The spark for their new business idea came after a Sunday family dinner when a frozen yogurt craving sent the Stumms from their Uptown home out to Metairie. It occurred to them it was much too far a trip and that a franchise might do well in the city.

It’s been six years since photos of the shattered façade of the Hyatt Regency New Orleans brought the gritty imagery of a hurricane-battered downtown to people across the nation. Today the hotel officially filed those images away and announced that ...